Hello all!
My name is Tyrel, co-founder of FitCliq. Kourtney (co-founder) and I are incredibly excited to share our app with the world today.
We can all agree that staying active is very important for health and overall well-being. It's also more enjoyable when you have someone to share the activity with. The problem is that it can be hard to find the energy or inspiration to take the first step, and finding new people that enjoy the activities you do isn't easy either.
We worked hard for a few months and created FitCliq to make it incredibly easy to meet people nearby that enjoy the activities you do. Whether you are looking for a local gym buddy or you want to blaze the trails with someone in a city you are visiting, FitCliq is the easiest way to find them. We believe bringing people with shared interests/goals together can positively change the way we work out and stay motivated.
Please let me know what you think of FitCliq. I look forward to answering any questions and chatting with you all. Thanks!
PS - Kourtney and I will personally be connecting with as many of our users as we possibly can, within the app, to chat and help where we can.

@tyreljohnson Hey Tyrel, Really cool concept two questions:
1) Tinder's real magic wasn't the app itself but their early growth. Since it was a two sided marketplace they had to get lots of early adopters in every location to make a good experience. How are you tackling growth to make sure I can find workout partners in my area?
2) Given the vast range of abilities, attitudes and level of intensity/seriousness that different individuals approach the same physical activities with how are you address this? While I know there is obviously some hit and miss to this (just like Tinder would have had for dating) there are only so many times I'd want to end up hanging out with someone who took the activity way to intensely for me before I considered it a bad app experience

@adamscochran Hi Adam, thank you and I appreciate the questions.
1) While they did create a clever, easy-to-use and visually-focused UX, I do agree that their success with early growth is ultimately what contributed most to their success.
Like Tinder, FitCliq's success will rely on our ability to focus on acquiring mass amounts of users in specific areas (cities). There are many ways to do this, but our first priority is testing a couple of channels, analyzing the results, picking the best channel and scaling it up.
We believe our best bet would be to focus on colleges, like Tinder did. Why? Because there are high numbers of people in the same age range, within a small area, and there are many creative ways to get their attention. We are based in Phoenix, which means Arizona State University is our neighbor, and as of 2014 there were over 82,000 students.
2) This is something that has come up a lot in the past few days. Unfortunately, we did not foresee this before wrapping up our MVP. However, it's a big deal and I can see how useful it would be.
For now, we will try to do what we can to influence users to share their levels of expertise in the activities they enjoy in their bio. Better than that, we are working on solving this as we speak, and rolling out with our next update :)
Again, thank you for the questions! I loved it!

@tyreljohnson Great to hear Tyrel - hope it goes well for you. Certainly takes aim at a challenge I have of finding people who enjoy the same activities but are at a similar skill/intensity level. Maybe something to ask (and then sort users by) during the on-boarding process.
Tinder's early college work went well because they had one of their reps in-person visit the Fraternities and convince all the guys to sign up, then visit the Sororities right after and show "hey look all the popular guys you know are on here". Once they got all the influencers on board it spread. May be harder to do with gyms, although could also open up opportunity for those who are experienced at an activity to teach it to those interested to learn. Now you have two separate value groups you can pair and if that works really well you can monetize. "Jim wants to teach a 4 week long class on beginner running for $5 a person" "Amy, Tim and Scott all want to take that class" now Jim has commitments to others and company to do his running, has to teach others and therefore re-enforce the basics for himself, and gets a bit of money. Amy, Tim and Scott all get to learn a new skill, meet new people and commitment to exercising for a really low cost. FitCliq can take a small percent of the transaction.
Just my two cents - but love the direction and wish you all the best.

@tyreljohnson This is a cool product and I hope you it gets traction as it would be great to get more people out exercising. 2 suggestions - I could not find running / jogging. That seems to be a miss. I would add that. Second, you might want to target specific clubs as they have a similar mission and can get the word out to their members. For example, in NYC, NYRR for running and NYCC for cycling. Both these clubs have large memberships. Good luck!

@adamscochran Thanks Adam. That's the exact feature we plan on introducing in v2.0.
Users will be able to set their level of experience for each activity they are into. The way we display this information is clever and looks great, and it's easy to change your "skill level".
Yep, the way they grew Tinder took leg work but that's just the way it goes. Not everything growth related can be done sitting behind a desk, and we are totally fine with that. I really really like that idea you brought up about allowing people to teach, and be taught.
Although, we do have another growth strategy that will:
- add utility to our app, and be very valuable when people are making new connections
- create a lucrative revenue stream for us
- create a customer acquisition channel
I don't want to reveal it quite yet, but it can be expected to be rolled out in May :)